


Season of Dangerous Peace

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: The Three Lands [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Barons, Blood Brothers, Blood Feud, Brothers, Cemeteries, Character(s) of Color, Courage, Cousins, Ethical Issues, F/M, Family, Fantasy, Father & Son - Freeform, Female Character of Color, Gen, Gender Issues, Gods, Grief, Het, Male Character of Color, Marriage, Mentally disabled character, Middle Eastern character(s), Multi, Murderers, New Year, New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, Original Fiction, Original Het, POV Character of Color, Peace, Sons, Yuletide but not Yuletide, brothers-in-law, don't need to read other stories in the series, fathers, fathers-in-law, gen - Freeform, husband/wife, original gen, parenting, sons-in-law, spirituality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: "In a week's time, in every village and town in Koretia – even in the great capital city where the King's palace stood – Koretians would gather together to celebrate the New Year. There would be festive foods and drinks and the tossing of nuts into the fire, as the Koretians prayed to the gods for good fortune in the coming year. Most of all, there would be the making of creation baskets: living symbols of the beauty that was Koretia. . . . And then, the next day, the killings would resume."His village is dead, his baron broken beyond mending. Now, as the year reaches the season of peace, the baron's heir must decide whether to keep his family hidden, safe from the blood feud that is ravaging their kingdom, or to enter danger in quest of a higher goal.Boilerplate warning for all my stories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My readers](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+readers).



> _**Author's note:** This side story can be read on its own, but it contains major spoilers for _ [Law Links](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11195247) _._

Malcolm and Mira and their children were the last to leave, a week before the New Year. Lange was only surprised they hadn't left before. 

"I'm sorry," said Malcolm, his manner gruff. "I swore to Mira, after it happened, that we would stay so that Mira could help Leda care for their father. It has reached the point, though, where we must leave, for the children's sake. This is no longer a village; it's a rotting corpse." 

Harsh words to speak to the baron's heir, but Lange merely nodded. There was no way in which he could deny the obvious. The other villagers had begun to drift away, from the very moment that the killing had occurred, fifteen months before. Now not even the traders came here any more. The village was cursed – that was what everyone said, including the former inhabitants. 

Now Mountside was a village only in name. With Malcolm and his family gone, nobody would be left except Lange and Leda and their son Drew. 

And the Baron of Mountside, who was the only reason that Lange and his family remained there. 

"May the gods' good fortune guide your path," Lange said as he embraced Malcolm in farewell. Nearby, Mira held her newborn daughter in one arm as she tearfully hugged her older sister with the other arm. Next to the women, Mira's adopted boys made awkward attempts to say goodbye to Drew. At age thirteen, Drew was far too old to shed tears – so Lange had informed him sternly the previous year, when Drew's tears had threatened to drown them all. Now Drew was blinking his eyes rapidly but was succeeding in keeping control of his emotions, as a boy just three years from his manhood should do. 

Setting a good example for Drew, Leda remained tearless. She waved her farewells until Mira and Malcolm and the children were out of sight; then she rested her head against Lange's shoulder. She no longer kissed him passionately, as she had done in the past, but she had never entirely withdrawn from him. He put his arm around her, in wonder, as always, at the extent of her love and forgiveness. 

Drew was kicking the winter-hard earth, channelling all his frustration into that action. Lange said quickly, "Firewood. It's nearly time for the evening meal, and you haven't finished your chores for the day." 

Drew sighed but turned toward the log pile without argument. As Drew took up his axe, Lange reflected to himself that the gods had granted him the best of sons: a generous-hearted boy, always ready to help, and if Drew's eagerness and curiosity had dimmed markedly during the past year, that was hardly surprising. Lange sometimes felt as though he himself had been swallowed up by the bleakness of the events during the past four years. 

Leda pulled away from Lange finally, saying, "I should check on Father." 

"I'll do that," he said, trying not to let the reluctance he felt show in his voice. Leda held far too great a burden already, and with Mira gone, Leda's burden would be doubled. Caring for a sick man was not easy. 

Caring for the notorious Baron of Mountside was unspeakably hard. 

Lange paused at the door to the baron's bedchamber in order to brace himself. After Lange took charge of the baron's hall the previous year, moving his family there in order to care for the widowed baron, he had ordered a separate bedchamber built for the baron – "for his comfort," Lange had said at the time, though everyone knew that it was so his family would be partially shielded from the baron's muttered remarks. These remarks never ended, and would never end, possibly even after his death. 

Lange opened the door. The baron was lying on his bed. Sometimes he shuffled away from his bed to look out the window that gave him a good view of the village he had once presided over. But the window was shuttered now, not only because of the winter weather, but also to prevent the baron from noticing that all his villagers had left. He had never asked after them – never shown the slightest interest during the past year in the men and women and children he had been charged by the King to care for. Lange thought this spoke all too clearly as to the state of the baron's spirit. But there was always the chance that Berenger would realize that his villagers had abandoned him, and so Lange had nailed the shutters closed. 

The chamber was dim; they dared not leave a lamp lit here, for fear that Berenger would accidentally tip it over. Lange left the door open. In the main room of the hall, Leda was completing her preparations for their evening meal, with enticing smells drifting into the bedchamber. 

Lange went over to the bedside table. The cup there was empty, so he refilled it from the water pitcher. The baron did drink and eat if water and wine and food was offered to him – some instinct of survival still remained in him. But that was all he did, other than sleep and stare and mutter. 

His muttering grew louder as Lange approached. That was needless; Lange knew what Berenger would say, even before he said it. 

"It was the gods' will," said the baron. 

Lange did not reply; he merely reached over and helped the baron to rise up high enough in his bed to drink from the cup. 

"It was the gods' will," the baron repeated after he had sunk down again to his pillow. "He broke his blood vow. He had to die." 

Lange looked down upon Berenger, feeling the familiar mixture of filial love, compassion, and repulsion. His father-in-marriage – once one of the strongest men in the village – had grown frail during the past year. All the events after the departure of the baron's heir four years ago seemed not to have touched him at first: the fiery messages exchanged between Berenger and the young Baron of Cold Run; the eruption of the Kingdom of Koretia into civil war after the two villages' blood feud became a feud between the King and his long-time rival, the Baron of Blackpass; and the death of Berenger's wife. (It was not by her own hand, as rumored, but the loss of both her sons had undoubtedly hastened her end by measles.) The Baron of Mountside stood stout and stalwart through all this, certain of his righteousness in having declared his younger son to be hated by the gods. 

But then Adrian had returned to the village, and what happened after that had torn away the baron's mind. 

Lange set the empty cup back on the table, wondering, as he often did, what had caused the baron's madness. A curse from the Jackal God? The villagers thought so; that was why they had left. Or was it merely the case that the Baron of Mountside had finally reached the point where his righteousness ate at the foundations of his mind? 

Lange would never know. Nobody knew what had taken place at the time of Adrian's death; Mountside (as the baron was formally known) had sent all the rest of them away. After all, they had already played the role he needed them to play. 

Feeling sick, Lange settled the blanket over Berenger, who was muttering now about the ingratitude of his son – his younger son, he meant, for the elder son was no longer in his thoughts. From the baron's perspective, Hamar had been a good son, spending his dying moments encouraging the village to avenge his death with blood. It was Adrian who had failed to live up to Berenger's hopes. 

"How is he?" asked Leda as Lange closed the chamber door. 

"Comfortable," said Lange, the only response he could make. He came over to move the heavy stew-pot off the fire for her. His family was in no danger of dying this winter; though the traders no longer came, Lange and Malcolm had worked hard all summer to bring in a good crop, and the two of them had hunted and salted meat from the mountain animals. It was foolish of Malcolm, really, to leave the village when winter was upon them, but Lange had done his best to make matters easy for his brother-in-marriage, paying Malcolm for his share of the food. Lange had control over Berenger's savings, and there was enough money left – just enough – to last a few months more. 

So Lange and his family had enough food and coins to make it through the winter. Next spring would be harder. Indescribably hard, struggling to keep alive in a village where no one else lived and where no traders came. 

He said nothing of this to Leda. They both knew the situation, and they both knew that the baron would not allow himself to be removed from his village. Their one attempt – after the madness had come, when they thought to bring him to a priest in another borderland village for healing – had ended with Berenger practically tearing down the hall in his fury. Now the baron was weaker; they might be able to remove him from the village. But because he was weaker, that removal might mean his death. 

"I've made mushroom stew," Leda said as he settled the pot aside. "There's enough for double helpings." 

Mushrooms stewed in wild-berry wine was his favorite dish. He felt again his wonder at her love. Kissing her lightly on her lips, he said, "I'll check the garden to see whether any herbs are left to season it." 

It was an adequate excuse for Lange to leave the hall. As he did so, he heard Drew chopping wood on the other side of the hall, humming a New Year song. New Year was very close now; Lange must figure out some way for his family to celebrate it. 

He walked slowly through the grove. A few remaining blackroot nuts fell to the ground, shaken from the near-bare branches by a wind bringing winter cold over the mountains to the north of the village. The cemetery beyond the grove lay grey in the half-light filtering through the clouds above. Lange knelt down beside the tombstone that showed where his daughter's ashes had been buried. 

She had been less than a year old when she died of measles, a few weeks after the blood feud began. Lange had begotten other children on Leda besides their daughter and Drew, but the others had died before birth, and the measles had left Leda unable to conceive further. 

There had been talk then – by the priest, and even by Mountside, who seemed to care not about the shame his elder daughter would endure – of Lange setting Leda aside. Barrenness was the only grounds for divorce in Koretia. 

For once in his life, Lange had been furious enough to oppose his baron. Leda had already given him a son and heir; why should he care whether she gave him more? Even if Drew should die, Lange would not abandon Leda; she was the love of his life, his reason for being. He had no purpose in this world, except to care for Leda and their son. 

And to be Berenger's heir, but that had not mattered to him in those days. He had convinced himself that, after due time, Adrian would return, Berenger would forgive his wayward son, and all would be as it should be, with Adrian resuming his proper place as Berenger's heir. 

Lange placed a branch of holly on his daughter's grave, then went over to tend Hamar's grave. Lange had never particularly liked Adrian's elder brother, though Adrian and Hamar had been fond of each other. To Lange's mind, Hamar was partly to blame for all this, encouraging a blood feud in his dying moments. Hamar had been only eighteen when he had died, but Adrian had been sixteen then, and Berenger's younger son had shown better sense. 

Still, Hamar had been young; it was to be hoped that he had spent little time in the Jackal's fire, being cleansed of his impurities. If good fortune shone upon him, Hamar was now at peace in the Land Beyond, in favor with the gods. Lange placed a branch of holly on Hamar's grave and stood up. His gaze drifted down to the river that wound its way around the southern foot of the mountain on which the village of Mountside was placed. On the southern bank of that river lay a barely visible village. 

Cold Run, Mountside's enemy. 

The sky was darkening; from where he stood, Lange could see pricks of light in the rival village. He knew that the lights represented torches that were placed in outdoor sconces by the villagers during this season of peace preceding the New Year. All through Koretia, the civil war – the kingdom-wide blood feud that had begun in Mountside and Cold Run and then spread like flames – was temporarily set aside. Koretians everywhere were lighting festive torches and preparing to celebrate the most important day in the Koretian year: the New Year, commemorating when the gods created their law and gave that law as a gift to the Koretian people. 

In a week's time, in every village and town in Koretia – even in the great capital city where the King's palace stood – Koretians would gather together to celebrate the New Year. There would be festive foods and drinks and the tossing of nuts into the fire, as the Koretians prayed to the gods for good fortune in the coming year. Most of all, there would be the making of creation baskets: living symbols of the beauty that was Koretia. 

And then, the next day, the killings would resume. 

Lange turned away. He needed peace – he most desperately needed peace from all that had happened during the past four years. But where peace was to be found in this blood-soaked kingdom, he could not imagine. 

o—o—o

As though he had only been awaiting the departure of Mira and her family, the Baron of Mountside died three nights later. 

It was Drew, creeping into his grandfather's chamber before dawn to check on him, who discovered that Berenger had passed into the Land Beyond. Drew woke his parents, and soon they were all standing around Berenger's bed, looking down at him. 

Lange broke the silence finally, asking Leda, "Can you do it alone?" Preparing the body for its three-day wake was a women's mystery, usually undertaken by all the women in the village. 

Leda pushed her hand through her long hair, loosened for the night. She looked tired. Her cheeks were dry, as though she had used up all her tears long ago. "I'm not sure. I think . . . I think I will need Drew's help." 

Lange looked quickly at his son, but Drew seemed more intrigued than offended at this potential slur upon his growing manhood. Encouraged by this return of Drew's curiosity, Lange rested his hand briefly on the head of the young man, who was doing a good job of obeying Lange's standing orders that he not cry. "I'll collect the wood for the pyre," Lange said. "Let me know if you need me to fetch any supplies." 

It was a crisp morning, with frost fuzzing the flat rocks upon which the village houses were built. Lange navigated his way to the grove by means of the earthen slope, slipping occasionally. He was not a native of the Koretian borderland, where mountains stood tall. He had grown up in the lowlands of southern Koretia, an hour's ride from the capital. Fourteen years before, on a visit to the capital, Lange had met a boy newly arrived there, on his way to be deposited in the priests' orphanage outside the city. The boy was sitting on a fruit-box in the market, momentarily abandoned while the priests who had brought him there disappeared into the King's palace to meet with the King's priest. 

Lange did not have enough time in his schedule to await the priests' return, but he had stayed with the boy for a few minutes, listening to him talk about the borderland village he was already homesick for. The boy seemed disturbed by the village priest's tendency to settle disturbances through blood and blade, but the boy missed his playmates in the village, especially his blood brother, and he considered the village's setting beside a mountain to be far superior to what he had seen so far of the lowlands. 

"You should visit there," said the boy, who was aged somewhere between child and youth. "Cold Run. Remember the name." 

He had remembered the name, less for the village's sake than because of the boy's gentle, charming manner. A couple of months later, it so chanced that Lange's father, who employed him in the family carpentry business, had sent him north to see whether better prices for logs could be found in the borderland. Lange had taken the opportunity to seek out Cold Run— 

—and had nearly died when a snowstorm blew up. He had never before encountered snow; fortunately, he stumbled into the village before the Jackal God pulled him into the Land Beyond. 

Not Cold Run. Mountside, a short space away from Cold Run. 

As Lange began to gather fallen branches, he thought to himself how much his life had been determined by chance. If he had not met the boy that day in the capital, if he had not remembered the name of the boy's village, if he had not been sent north by his father, if he had not stumbled across Mountside in the snowstorm, if he had not fallen in love with Leda— 

—if Hamar had not died, if Adrian had not been sent as a hunter to Cold Run, if Adrian had not fled from his duty as hunter, if some ill chance had not sent Adrian back home to where his vengeful father awaited, if Adrian had not been betrayed by one of his kinsmen— 

Lange ducked his face under his arm to wipe off the sweat on his brow. All his life was chance, mere chance, and if that was the case, what point was there in seeking guidance from the gods? At best, the gods might be gambling with men's fates, throwing the dice to determine which direction the men should go. At worst, the gods had no more idea than Lange did of what he should do next. 

o—o—o

After the three days of mourning, they burned Berenger's body, gathered the ashes, and buried him in the cemetery. Drew, who loved his grandfather despite everything, had struggled mightily as Leda lowered the ash-box into the ground; only Lange's sharp word had kept back the tears. 

Now Lange and Leda lay in their bed together in the dark hall, lit by the fingers of moonlight that had made their way through the shutter cracks. Above them, in the loft, Drew lay asleep. Leda said, "We'll have to leave now." 

He had always encouraged her to speak her mind, having recognized, from the negative example of Berenger's marriage, what could happen when a husband thoroughly cowed his wife. For her part, Leda never fought Lange when he made his decision, apparently content with the privilege he offered her of helping to shape that decision. 

This time, though, there was no dispute as to what they should do, only how they should do it. "Where?" asked Lange. "This entire cursed kingdom is at war. And I have nothing to offer any village, other than a few rusty skills at carpentry." 

Skills that would be turned down immediately, once the villagers realized who he was. The rest of Mountside's former inhabitants might find refuge in new villages, but not he. Not with his new name. 

Leda said hesitantly, "You could ask the King to give you another village . . ." 

He shook his head. He had spent the day going through Berenger's belongings to see if the baron had anything worth saving, other than his dwindling coins. Berenger's clothes Lange had set aside to be reused for cloth; Lange already possessed a set of silver-hemmed tunics, made at the time that Berenger declared him heir. There was Berenger's sword . . . But that too Lange set aside. He was not ready to discard the title of baron that he had inherited; if nothing else, he had Drew's inheritance to think of. But to claim that barony in any open way, by wearing a baron's sword or contacting the King, would be to invite disaster. The King had drawn every available man into his war against the Baron of Blackpass; only Lange's duties in caring for the previous Baron of Mountside had prevented him from being sucked into the King's blood feud. After all, Mountside was to blame for the feud starting in the first place; it was only right that its baron should fight in the war. That was how the King would regard matters, at any rate. 

Leda seemed not to need to have this explained to her, for she only replied, "I've been thinking and thinking, trying to recall if I have any close kin outside this village. There's nobody within a cousin's range that I can remember." 

Besides the Baron of Cold Run, she meant. Griffith was her cousin-in-brotherhood, by way of his blood brother Emlyn, who was Leda's mother's sister's son. Emlyn had left Cold Run long ago, but Griffith would certainly recognize Leda's kinship. He had always abided by the time-honored code that exempted women and children from the blood feud – a code that was increasingly violated by the King's hunters, but Griffith was of a different blood-lineage. He might be willing to allow Leda and Drew to stay in his village— 

—but not Lange. They both knew that. 

Lange sighed aloud. "My parents are still angry that I married a borderland woman against their will; they haven't responded to my letters through all these years, though a trader who visited here last year informed me that they're still alive. My elder brother married into the Baron of Blackpass's lineage; he's a hunter for that baron now and would be duty-bound to try to kill me if he saw me. My younger brothers are living in the capital, serving as clerks in the King's army—" 

"Where you might be recognized and ordered to attend the King." Leda gnawed her lip. "There must be some place we can go where we won't be drawn into this war." 

"We should go to Emor." 

Startled, Lange raised himself up on an elbow. Dark against the glow of the hearth-fire coals, Drew stood at the foot of their bed, blankets over his shoulders. 

"Emor?" Now sitting, Leda sounded as startled as Lange felt. "Why would we want to emigrate to a foreign land?" 

"Because it's where Adrian went!" Drew's voice held an unaccustomed passion. 

"Son, we don't know that," said Lange, trying to take control of the situation. 

"But he must have! The man who came for him . . . He tried to pretend he was Koretian, but I'm sure he wasn't from our kingdom. His skin was too light, even for a borderlander. Adrian must have fled over the mountains to Emor, knowing that Grandfather wouldn't be able to reach him there. Knowing that he'd be safe from our blood feud." 

It made sense. The Empire of Emor, notoriously determined to value only its own laws, looked down upon its southern neighbor's blood feuds. If Adrian had indeed sought refuge amongst the Emorians, the Emorians would have protected him against any Koretian who was foolish enough to cross the mountains in an attempt upon Adrian's life. 

But even so . . . 

"Drew, he couldn't have," Leda protested. "The Emorians are atheists. Adrian worshipped the gods, right to the end. You heard him." 

It was the wrong thing to say. Very much the wrong thing to say, even if Leda had only been referring to Adrian's trial, which all of the village children and women had overheard. 

But it had been worse than that. Drew – curious Drew, who had always eavesdropped where he shouldn't – had been the only witness, besides Berenger, to Adrian's death. 

Drew stiffened. Lange resisted an impulse to climb out of bed and take his son into his arms. No doubt that would merely result in Drew crying again for three days, as he had after Adrian's death. 

So instead, Lange said, "Drew, you know better than to interrupt us after bedtime for any matter that can be dealt with in the daytime. Return to your bed." 

Drew turned immediately, the obedient son, but as he did so, he said plaintively, "I want to go where Adrian did. I want us to be safe and free." 

As the ladder to the loft creaked under Drew's weight, Lange met Leda's eyes and held them. After a minute, she shook her head slowly. He squeezed her hand in agreement. Matters were very bad, but matters would not improve if he and Leda abandoned the gods, raising Drew among people who never worshipped the seven gods and goddesses of Koretia. As Lange had said, even Adrian had not abandoned his belief in the gods, despite every incentive to do so. 

"The Jackal spoke to him, he said," Leda murmured, evoking Adrian's words at his trial. "I wish the Jackal would speak to us and tell us what we should do." 

He drew her gently down to the bed then, and gave her the only comfort he could, as her husband. But when she had fallen asleep afterwards, he remained awake, staring into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Near moonset, he gave up the struggle to sleep. 

He dressed and went outside. The night was overcast, but at the western horizon, the sky was clear, showing the waning moon sliding down toward the waterfall at the end of the world. The goddess cast her eerie light over the ground, turning the frost blue. As Lange stared at the ground, he felt a cold kiss touch him from above. He looked up. Snow was falling. 

Snow rarely fell in Koretia, even this far north, but the borderland did receive the occasional snowfall. The last snow had occurred five winters earlier, on the New Year. As the children of Mountside excitedly showed off to their elders the creation baskets they had each made, Adrian rushed over to show his to Lange. Lange duly praised it, with half an eye upon Drew, whose curiosity about the festive bonfire was bringing him too close to the flames. Fortunately, Leda was there; she snatched Drew back in time. 

"It's rather small," said Adrian in a self-deprecating manner. "The creation basket at Cold Run is quite big." 

"Only one basket?" Lange enquired. He had never visited Cold Run; a feud had broken out between Mountside and Cold Run shortly after he joined the village of Mountside by marrying its baron's elder daughter. So far, the feud was trivial, involving a few thefts and pranks on both sides. 

Adrian, though, remembered Cold Run; he had been seven when the feud broke out, and before then, he and Hamar had often visited Cold Run to play with the baron's sons and the baron's elder son's blood brother. The three boys – Griffith and Siward and Emlyn – had reportedly been welcome in Mountside as well, back in those days. 

"It's enormous!" Adrian's face was so animated that, for once, he looked very much like Drew. Otherwise, Adrian didn't much look like anyone in his family, though he shared his mother's dark coloring and – Lange had been told – his cousin Emlyn's snub nose. 

"How big?" asked Lange encouragingly, trying not to reveal that his attention was actually on Drew, who was creeping up to snatch some blackroot nuts off the fire-hot stones where they were roasting. Once again, Leda caught him in time. Caring for Drew was a full-time activity, and the situation only worsened as the boy grew older. Having been given his boys' dagger two years earlier, Drew was inclined to duel every boy in the village, though Adrian, seven years older than Drew, scorned to cross blades with his eight-year-old nephew. 

"Oh, enormous!" Adrian spread his arms wide. "Almost as big as the village! Instead of just showing a bit of moss and a house or two, Cold Run's creation shows the entire Kingdom of Koretia – all the way from the capital to the borderland. You can even see Mountside on it!" 

"And Cold Run, presumably." Lange smiled at him. 

Adrian shrugged, in the manner of a boy who cares little of what happens outside his own village. "I suppose so. I didn't look." He eyed Lange sidelong. "Do you suppose I'll ever be able to see Cold Run's creation basket again?" 

"Oh, I imagine so." Lange's attention drifted back to Drew. "We're only having a silly squabble with Cold Run over whether we should pay for a rooster that one of our carts ran over." 

Five years later, Lange stood staring up at the night clouds, feeling the feathery chill of snow upon his face. Nine months after that conversation, the feud between Mountside and Cold Run had turned to blood. A month later, the Baron of Mountside had sent his remaining son to Cold Run to hunt Siward, the younger brother and heir of the new Baron of Cold Run. Adrian had disappeared; under hard questioning by Cold Run's priest, Siward had reluctantly revealed that Adrian had decided not to kill him. The barons squabbled over whether this constituted victory on the part of Cold Run. The Baron of Mountside appealed to the King, who was the head of his bloodline. The Baron of Cold Run appealed to Blackwood, baron of the town of Blackpass, who was the head of Cold Run's bloodline. Soon the King and Blackwood were sending out their own hunters, drawing upon barons and lesser free-men who owed them allegiance. The entire Kingdom of Koretia exploded into civil war. 

The moon was continuing to sink toward her sleep. Lange forced himself to move toward his destination, which was the cemetery. The grove of blackroot trees was alive with the sound of snow shaking the last leaves of autumn from their branches. The cemetery glowed grey-blue with moonlight. Lange moved down the first row of tombstones set flat upon the ground, clearing wet leaves and twigs from the tombstones as he went. Each of the names that he read, he recognized. They were the names of the Mountside men who had died in the blood feud. 

He paused to brush snow off one of the tombstones. Titus had been Lange's blood brother during that year before the blood feud. Like Lange, Titus was an outsider who had joined the village through a blood vow of marriage. Sharing this common background, they had spent many hours together, discussing their pasts, discussing their wives, discussing their children – in Lange's case, his son and newborn daughter; in Titus's case, the children he yearned to beget. 

Titus had died before begetting any child, his throat slit by a hunter's blade. Not long afterwards, still furious at the waste of his friend's life, Lange had gone to hunt in Cold Run. 

He stood up from the tombstone that memorialized Titus, feeling his body ache from the work he had done that day, building the funeral pyre. Three days of mourning for a baron; then his body was given over to the Jackal's fire to be purified. It had happened once before, though the baron then had been Cold Run. 

o—o—o

"I have no wish to take the feud any further than it has already gone." On that day, a month after the blood feud began, Griffith had stood in the priest's sanctuary in Mountside, dressed in mourning grey. "I am willing to concede victory to Mountside." 

There was a stir among the Mountside men present. Cold Run's priest, who had accompanied his baron to the rival village, looked thoroughly disapproving of this premature talk of peace. He frowned as Griffith made his offer: money to pay for the Mountside cart that was damaged when it ran over Cold Run's rooster, as well as coins as blood-payment for the Cold Run man who would have died if the feud had ended in the normal way, with a hunter being caught and killed. 

Lange looked at Berenger, curious as to whether he would accept this offer. With his own anger slaked by his killing in Cold Run, Lange would just as soon have peace. The longer the blood feud continued, the more men who would die in Mountside. Only Adrian was safe; he was resolutely refusing to take part in the feud – an odd stance, but Lange was less inclined than Berenger was to fault Adrian for his choice. Adrian was still young, barely turned sixteen; he'd have plenty of opportunities as he grew older to defend his village. 

Berenger's look of scorn was eloquent. "Give me Hamar's murderer, and I will consider the matter ended." 

Drew was peeking in through one of the windows. Lange sighed and moved toward the doorway, so that he could alert Leda that Drew was poking his nose into men's business again. Lange was arrested at the door by the realization that everyone in the room had gone still. 

He turned around. The new Baron of Cold Run had not drawn his blade or even touched his hilt, but every aspect of his bearing shouted a duel-challenge. 

Yet when Griffith spoke, his words were a different sort of challenge. He said, "Hamar's murderer has already received his punishment from our priest. If you wish his blood in payment for your son's death, I stand in his stead." 

Lange sucked in his breath. So did everyone else. Never had such an offer been made, in the entire history of Koretia. Occasionally, some low-ranked man, in order to save his village further bloodshed, would offer to allow himself to be caught and killed during his hunting, so that the feud would end. 

But not a baron. Not a man appointed to serve as a father over his people. 

Drew was whispering the news, much too loudly, to the others outside. Lange heard Leda gasp as she learned of her cousin's offer. Before Lange could decide whether he should join Leda, Berenger said, the contempt clear in his voice, "My son, dying from the fire, demanded vengeance upon his killer. The gods were witness to that cry, and I would be lacking in my duty to the gods if I allowed their vengeance to go unfulfilled. I will accept no substitute for the murderer's blood." 

It was like a thrust into the belly of a man who has willingly disarmed himself. Lange felt sweat break out on his skin as he saw Griffith's face change. 

Yet still Cold Run did not touch his blade; he kept the peace oath he had made for this visit. He said only, in words as cold as the name of his village, "Then let the gods judge between us. They alone know which of us deserves their vengeance." 

Griffith swept past Berenger, not deigning to look behind him as he walked away. Cold Run's priest, appearing delighted, bustled after him. Lange stepped out of the way to let them pass. 

It was then that Griffith paused. Just for a moment, and just for a glance, but Lange knew what that dark glance meant. Lange had not been certain, two days before, whether anyone had sighted him leaving Cold Run, but now he knew that his presence had been noted. 

For Griffith's glance said plainly, in unspoken words, "Enter my village again, murderer of my beloved father, and I will slay you." 

o—o—o

Moonlight lay soft over Cold Run. Lange stared down at the village, his mind still captured by the events of four years before. 

Four years, for that had been his last contact with Cold Run. There had been one more hunter sent to Mountside – the unlucky Siward, who was sighted for a second time – and then Berenger had forced Adrian against his will to become a hunter . . . 

. . . and then nothing. The rest of Koretia erupted into war. Having failed to locate Adrian with his hunters, Berenger sent as many village men as he could spare to fight for the King in the south, and he indicated his willingness to resume the blood feud with Cold Run any time that this would be of strategic advantage to his King. Lange assumed that Griffith had made a similar offer to the Baron of Blackpass. But Blackwood and the King, entangled in their unexpectedly ferocious war with each other, seemed to have forgotten entirely about the two villages which had initiated the war. No more hunters came from Cold Run. No more blood was shed in Mountside, until Mountside chose to shed the blood of his own son. 

Lange covered his face, seeing in his mind's eye the bloody corpse of Adrian, and Mountside raging in mad fury over it, shouting curses at the Jackal God whom he alone could see, while the rest of the village stood stunned and uncertain what to do. It was the beginning of the end of Mountside – both the man and the village. 

And now Berenger was dead, and Lange was Mountside: baron of a dead village, living in a land filled with men who would likely entice his son to hunt and murder. 

"Oh, gods," Lange groaned aloud. "What shall I do?" 

His hands fell from his face. He turned westward, in preparation to return to his bed, with his question unanswered. 

It was then that he saw the Jackal. 

o—o—o

Lange had debated Berenger, on many occasions, as to the nature of the Jackal. It was a game between them. 

"He's not a god!" thundered Berenger two seasons after the blood feud began, when they were walking together in the fields while the baron inspected the spring crop. As the baron and his heir passed by, the village men working the fields gave respectful bows of the head, then returned to their hard work. Rank had its privileges; Lange had scarcely done a day's labor at carpentry since he married Leda, for Berenger had quickly assigned him the lighter work of helping run the village council. Lange suspected this had less to do with rank – he was only third in line for the barony – than it did with Berenger's dissatisfaction that, after four births, his wife had supplied him with only two sons, both of them small children when Lange first arrived at Mountside. Berenger had quickly set his new son-in-marriage to work that his sons were too young to accomplish. 

Now, eleven years later, one son was dead and the other in exile, a fact that he and Berenger continued to ignore as the baron said, "He's a man, I tell you! I've seen him with my own eyes." 

"Have you indeed?" said Lange with mild curiosity. The masked man who called himself by the name of the god of death was rarely seen, flitting from village to village in the borderland. He had become an object of curiosity, not only among the borderlanders, but among all Koretians, who needed a sweet bit of gossip to distract them from the growing menace of their civil war. "What were the circumstances, sir?" 

Berenger shrugged. The baron was a big man, strong in muscle and mind, worthy of the title that the King had bestowed upon him when his father, the previous Baron of Mountside, had died in an earlier blood feud. "He came suddenly upon me, like a cut-throat murderer, while I was tending Hamar's ash-tomb one evening at the end of last year." Berenger waved his hand in the direction of the grove of blackroot trees that screened the cemetery from view of the rest of the village. "He was nothing but a man, wearing an ordinary tunic and a silly little imitation of a prayer-mask over his face. If he were a god, don't you think I would have known it?" 

Lange tried to think how one would recognize a god, especially one that claimed to have taken human form. All he could think of was the Jackal's fire, which was said to be capable of transforming evil to good, but only if the sacrifice were willingly given. 

"What did he say to you?" asked Lange, his interest quickening. Nobody seemed quite sure what motive stirred this Jackal man, though the man and his growing band of followers were making life miserable for many of Koretia's noblemen, playing annoying pranks upon them. It had not escaped anyone's notice that some of the pranks resembled those that were supposed to have been played by the Jackal God, who was a trickster. 

Berenger snorted as he leaned over to yank a weed from the ground. "He told me to end our feud with Cold Run. He told me to welcome back that god-cursed man who was once my son." 

Lange wondered then whether Berenger had killed the Jackal. But no – there had been news of the Jackal since then. The priests of Koretia were becoming increasingly worried about the man's activities. It was said that he opposed time-honored sacred practices such as the blood feud, which allowed Koretians to bring the gods' justice to lawbreakers, hunting those lawbreakers and their kin in other villages. 

Lange had never quite understood how this could be accomplished by both villages sending out hunters, nor why so much blood needed to be shed in the process of executing the single man who had broken the gods' law. But Berenger was not the right person to ask this question – and in any case, it was hardly Lange's responsibility to worry about such matters. He was a layman, not a priest; unlike Adrian, he had never worried himself over matters of theology, but simply did what his duty required. 

A flash of motion caught Lange's eye. He turned to see Drew excitedly chasing in circles three boys who had been orphaned when their father died in the blood feud the previous autumn and their mother died of measles the previous winter. Malcolm and Mira, married during the New Year festivities, had quickly adopted the orphans, even though Mira was scarcely older than the boys. 

All four of the boys chasing one another were armed. Berenger had recently decided it was unlikely that Cold Run would send hunters again until the King and Blackwood settled their argument over which village had precedence in hunting. So he had declared that the Mountside boys – who had been forced to remain unarmed during the blood feud, lest they be mistaken for men by Cold Run's hunters – could wear their daggers again. 

Lange frowned. Drew was not participating in Hunter and Hunted, a boys' game that Lange had forbidden him to play after the events of the previous autumn. But this rough play cut too close to the skin; Lange caught Drew's eye and shook his head vigorously. 

Drew sent a pleading look; Lange continued to frown at him. Sighing, Drew turned and said something to his adopted cousins, who had stopped running when he did. The cousins all groaned, but they raced off from him. Drew slowly walked away, kicking the dust as he did so. 

Lange turned his attention back to Berenger, who was scrutinizing the crops and seemed not to have noticed the interlude. This being the case, all that Lange said was, "Let us suppose, then, that this man who calls himself the Jackal is not a god." An easy concession to make; any god of sense would hardly plant himself in the middle of a bloody battlefield, wearing a body that could be killed. "He could still be a wise man in service to the gods, sir. He has attracted many followers—" 

Berenger dismissed this possibility with a violent sweep of the arm. "He doesn't claim to be in service to the gods; he claims to be a god. He's either a charlatan or a madman. Either way, he deserves our contempt." 

o—o—o

Now, standing over the ash-tomb of the baron who had died mad, Lange tried to think what he should say to the masked man standing before him. Unlike Berenger, Lange had never felt contempt for the Jackal; it was clear that, in his own mysterious way, the Jackal was seeking to bring an end to the blood feuds. Whether charlatan or not, the Jackal possessed wisdom, and Lange had always respected wisdom. 

In any case, it seemed prudent not to raise the wrath of a man who was currently wearing a wickedly curved dagger. Lange had armed himself when he dressed, of course, but a cemetery was not the proper place for a duel. So Lange merely said politely, "Jackal? What brings you to this village?" 

The Jackal was standing with his back to the moonlight; the front of his body was too dark to reveal anything other than his outline. From that outline, Lange could tell that the stranger was wearing over his face one of the prayer-masks which Koretians had long hung from their houses' walls as an aid to their worship. Moonlit snow swirled about the stranger, like flickers of flame spinning away from a bonfire. The Jackal said in a voice quiet as the night, "This is no village. Mountside is a rotting corpse. I will eat it, if you wish." 

Lange felt his skin crawl then. He understood now why Berenger had been so unwilling to classify the Jackal as merely a wise man, doing his duty to the gods. This man's words offered no compromise: either he was the Jackal God, eating the flesh of the dead with his fire, or he was a blasphemer. 

Lange had spent his life living in the narrow corridor of compromise and convention; he was unwilling to give up that safe space quite yet. He said, with the politeness of a baron greeting his guest, "If you have come to do honor to our late baron, you are welcome." 

Too late, he remembered the last encounter that Berenger was thought to have had with the Jackal God. Everyone knew that story by now; it was the reason the village was thought to be cursed. 

But the Jackal ignored this obvious means of attacking the late Baron of Mountside. Indeed, he had not so much as glanced at Berenger's ash-tomb, though Lange had inscribed his father-in-marriage's name on the tombstone, along with the mask of the god he had worshipped, the Jackal. 

Instead, the Jackal said, "Confess unto me your deeds, before the gods." 

Then Lange felt the full chill at the end of the year. 

o—o—o

He had been present at Adrian's trial – all of the village men had been, while the village women and children had listened covertly outside. Within the cramped confines of the priest's sanctuary, Berenger had called together the full council, which in their village consisted of every grown man. "Confess unto me your deeds, before the gods," the priest had said to the bound young man compelled to kneel before him. Upon these opening words of the rite of judgment, Adrian had begun to speak. 

He was only nineteen, but his words had been as forceful as that of a man much older. He had denied he had done anything wrong in breaking his blood vow to murder, saying that the portion of the gods' law which governed the blood feuds went against the will of the gods. As evidence of this, he spent some time discussing the entirely irrelevant topic of Emorian laws against private vengeance, and then – more to the point – he claimed he had met the Jackal, and that the Jackal himself had condemned the blood feuds. 

Throughout the trial, Lange watched Berenger, not Adrian. Even if Lange had not held that conversation with Berenger about the Jackal, he would have known from the baron's expression that Adrian had made the wrong argument. If Adrian had pleaded the weakness of youth, the natural fear of a young man sent on his first hunt, there was a possibility, however slim, that Berenger might have forgiven his sometime heir. After all, the baron had only two sons, and one of them was dead. 

But in openly flouting the time-honored customs of the village and of the gods whom the villagers worshipped, Adrian was setting himself up as a rebel against the divine. Lange was not at all surprised when the priest pronounced Adrian to be god-cursed, nor that Berenger quickly confirmed that judgment. 

Then came the vote for punishment. Strictly speaking, the choice of punishment was the priest's province, but in Mountside, the council had always been permitted to offer its recommendation. It was clear what their baron wanted, and it was also clear that the baron's anger would fall upon any man who failed to carry out his duty to the village and to the gods. 

One by one, each of the village men voted with a silent show of the hand. Lange voted last; then he left the sanctuary to tell his wife that, like the other village men, he had voted that her beloved brother should die. 

o—o—o

The glow of swirling moonlight hurt his eyes, but he refused to close them. His gaze was fixed upon the dark figure at the heart of the light. 

He found his tongue finally. "I do not believe that you have the right to demand a confession, Jackal." The only answer he could make, in truth. Whatever else the Jackal was, he was neither a god nor a priest. He had no right to place Lange under trial. 

Light dimmed as the moon passed behind a cloud. The Jackal took a few steps forward. He stopped at the outer edge of the cemetery, near the place where Adrian's ashes would have been buried if his body had not been mysteriously carried away by a light-skinned stranger who appeared in their village, less than two hours after the execution. 

"Let us pretend that I am not what I am." The Jackal's voice was surprisingly light, as soft as the touch of snowflakes upon skin. The voice seemed to echo in the cemetery, in a way that made its underlying timbre hard to recognize. "Even so, do you not possess the right to make such a confession?" 

Lange was silent for a spell. It was true that the gods' law permitted any man who was troubled in conscience to confess his misdeeds to a fellow layman, should no priest be present. Mountside had possessed no priest since the day that Adrian died, when the priest who had condemned him had fled the village, as though fleeing from the vengeance of the gods. 

But to speak of such matters to a stranger? 

"You already know what happened," Lange replied. An ambiguous response, for a god would be expected to know what had happened in this village, while the simple fact was that everyone in Koretia knew what had happened in this village. 

"Oh, yes, I know." The Jackal's voice remained light. "I know that the blood feud began when Siward of Cold Run burned down the village hall here, accidentally killing the elder son of Mountside. I know that Mountside declared a blood feud and sent his hunters to Cold Run – including you, I believe?" 

Lange was silent, seeing again the murderous fury in Griffith's face. 

"And then, after Cold Run sued for peace, Mountside sent out another hunter. That hunter died, in due time, in a pool of his own blood in this village sanctuary, betrayed by some unknown kinsman. Mountside went mad; it died; it lies a corpse. That is the tale as Koretia tells it, is it not?" 

The flurry of snow stung his eyes. He blinked, trying to keep in vision the dark figure standing before the missing ash-tomb. 

"Tell me the rest of the tale, Mountside," said the Jackal, his voice light and lilting. "Tell me what happened when the son of Berenger returned." 

He drew in a breath, feeling the cold cut like knives into his chest. The masked man waited. 

"It happened last year, at the turn into autumn." Lange's voice was slow and hoarse, as though he were sick. "There began to be talk in the village that Adrian had been seen. Just glimpses, out of the corner of the eye; nobody was quite sure. But our baron heard the talk, and he gave orders that Adrian was to be found and captured and brought to justice." 

The moon was setting now. Its light touched the blackwood trees, setting them aglow, as though fire had entered the grove. Watching the blue-white blaze, Lange said, "I'd gone into the grove to check on whether the trees were likely to bring a good harvest of nuts. Then, on impulse, I decided to visit my daughter's ash-tomb. I had not yet reached there when Adrian stepped out from behind a tree. 

"He was unarmed. He said he had no desire to harm his family. He told me that he hadn't wished to return here, where he was not wanted, but for reasons he could not explain to me, he needed to know whether the Jackal had visited Mountside. He told me that, the moment he learned that information, he would leave and never return. He pleaded with me to help him. 

"I drew my dagger, captured him, and handed him over to our village priest for judgment." 

The words seemed to float away, like flakes upon the wind. The Jackal's words floated upon the air as well. "Did he say why he had chosen you?" 

Lange shook his head. "I've never known. Adrian and I weren't particularly close; our gap in age was too great for brotherly companionship, and he looked to his father as a model for manhood. It's a mystery why he should have trusted me." 

"Perhaps," said the man in the god's mask, "he knew you to be a man of honor." 

For a long time after that, Lange could not speak. He heard the soft patter of snow falling upon the ground, and its rustle upon the musty leaves. The night was growing darker. 

In the end, Lange said, "I've wondered on hundreds of nights since then how I could have done such a thing to my wife's brother. The answer is that I never anticipated such a crisis arising. I've always tried to live a conventional life, doing my accepted duty. The one time I broke away from convention – when I married Leda – I lost my family. If I had helped Adrian escape, and if my assistance had been discovered, I would have lost my new family, for Berenger would have driven me away from Leda and Drew. . . . If I had thought about what might happen, if I had planned what I would do if I was forced to make a choice, perhaps I would have chosen differently. But I had no warning, and so I did what was conventional. I did the duty that was expected of me. 

"And because of what I did, Adrian was destroyed, my father-in-marriage was destroyed, our village was destroyed. And now my wife and son, whom I love more than my life, lie in danger of destruction as well. If I cannot find a safe place for us to live, they will die from poverty or from the ravages of this war." 

He could feel tears on his face, cold icicles dripping down. He raised his head to look at the masked man, darkening in the night. "Does such a place exist?" he asked. The Jackal was well-travelled; if anyone knew of a place of refuge in Koretia, he must. 

The Jackal cocked his head, like an animal contemplating its meal. "You seek peace," he said. 

Lange swallowed the painful hardness in his throat. "It is much for a man like me to ask, I know. After what I did, I deserve not peace but punishment. Yet it is not for me alone that I seek peace. Leda and Drew . . . they have undergone too much already, none of it their fault. They deserve a place where they can be safe from this land's bloody war." 

The Jackal turned his head south, as though listening to something heard from far away. As the moon dipped under the horizon, a last glimmer lit the paint on his mask, so that Lange could see the mouth filled with sharp teeth, the glowing blades of the whiskers. Only the mask's eyes were dark, where the eyeholes lay. 

The Jackal said, "I could lead you to such a place. A place in this land where all three of you could live in peace." 

Lange held his breath, hardly daring to hope. The Jackal turned his head back to look at Lange. As he did so, the last of the moonlight slid away, darkening his mask. But for reasons that made no sense at all, the eyeholes suddenly flared alight, as though sparked into fire. 

In a voice that sounded as though it were smiling, the Jackal added, "Or you could seek a dangerous peace."


	3. Chapter 3

He forced himself to sleep afterwards, determined to break the spell of the Jackal's visit. In the morning, he could no longer feel the strangeness of the conversation during the night, but his mind had not changed. So he woke Leda and told her what he had decided. 

Not surprisingly, this was the occasion on which Leda first opposed one of his decisions. "Lange, you can't!" she cried. "You know what will happen!" 

He knew very well, and so had the Jackal, staring at him out of those pitiless, light-filled eyes. Lange had not told Leda of the Jackal's visit; in the bleak light of the morning, that nightmare seemed to have vanished. Only the decision remained, as though the nightmare had cleared Lange's vision to see the obvious. 

"But why?" she begged when he did not respond. 

He could not tell her, "Because of how I love you and Drew." So instead, he gave her the second reason: "It is past time I brought peace. Can't you see? It is well past time." 

She was still a moment, warm within his arm in the cold room. Then suddenly she pressed herself upon him, her mouth passionate against his. 

He was surprised; open expressions of emotion were not Leda's way these days. His surprise must have showed itself in the stiffness of his body, for she drew back, saying softly, "I was just remembering why I first came to love you." She gathered herself together, reaching for her gown at the foot of the bed. "I'll wake Drew, and we'll pack our belongings." 

In the end, they took nothing except themselves and the clothes they wore. 

The way down the mountain was harder than he had anticipated; a hand's-span worth of snow had fallen during the night, blocking their way. Drew, an active boy who had spent many years exploring their mountain, directed them to the thin stream that ran down the slope, eventually turning into Cold Run River. They slid and slipped their way along its banks, where the snow turned into slush and then, as the day grew long, into ice. 

It was late afternoon before they reached the woods that had shielded Lange from sight of Cold Run, during that snowstorm long ago. By the time they saw the looming trees, the snow had stopped. The breeze shivered cold as an icicle, and when they stepped into the woods, the light from the dipping sun disappeared. 

The woods were sharp with the smell of needles; this was one of the few clusters of evergreens to be found south of the Emorian border. Brushing past a holly tree, Lange thought of the cemetery they had left behind. Nobody would tend the tombstones now. Even Titus's devoted young wife had left Mountside forever; Lange had heard through traders' gossip that she was remarried and doing her best to forget her past. 

Pinecones crunched underfoot as he travelled the uncertain path, holding Leda in one hand and Drew in the other. Ahead of them was the only light they had to follow: the bright blaze of a festive bonfire. Faintly now, Lange could hear singing: holiday songs and drinking songs and hymns. Drew's and Leda's hands were cold in his. 

When they reached the edge of the woods, Lange halted. The light was brighter now, but they were still far enough away from the village that all he could hear were snatches of conversation and laughter. He let go of his family's hands and knelt down in the snow, taking hold of Drew's shoulders. 

"No tears," he warned. "And above all, no fighting. We have come in peace." 

"Yes, sir." Drew's voice was faint. Lange had taken care, earlier, to warn his son of what his action would mean to Drew's own heirship. Drew had hardly seemed to listen to that aspect of the story. Boylike, he had shown greater emotion when ordered to strip himself of his boys' dagger. Lange had placed his own dagger alongside Drew's on the hall table; it had been harder than he anticipated to rid himself of his sign of manhood, which he had worn every day since he came of age. But setting aside his manhood was hardly the worst ordeal he would face today. 

"Stay at the edge of the woods," Lange told Drew. "If you see any sign at all that you and your mother are in danger, you must rush her to safety. Don't hesitate to run; she is in your care now." 

"Yes, sir." 

Those words were firmer; Lange took encouragement from this. He kissed Drew on the forehead – anything more tender would likely have caused Drew to burst into weeping – and then he took a deep breath, rose, and faced Leda. 

They looked at each other, both unwilling to speak the words. Finally Lange touched her cheek, his fingers dark against her light brown skin. As she held her chin high, bravely holding back any tears, he drew her into his arms for a light embrace. "Thank you for gifting me with Drew," was all he said. 

Then he left them there, standing on the edge of the dark woods as he walked forward. 

The village was closer than he had remembered, and much larger; Cold Run looked as though it had quadrupled in size during the past four years. Even so, it remained a village. Like Mountside, Cold Run was too insignificant to warrant a wall around it; the only village near it was Mountside, and both villages knew each other's defenses so well that any wall could have easily been breached. So Lange could see spread in front of him the entire of Cold Run: its houses, its hall for the baron and his family, its sanctuary, its storehouses and workplaces. The buildings surrounded a great space in front of him that he knew, from his one previous visit, was the village green, though it was currently covered by a thin veil of snow that had fallen since the green was cleared of earlier snow. 

Upon the green were the villagers, holding their New Year feast. With the snow no longer falling, they had succeeded in building up a great fire in the middle of the green; empty buckets nearby showed that the nut-tosses had already taken place. The men were sitting on one side of the fire, singing and conversing. The women and children were standing on the other side of the fire, preparing to serve out the newly roasted beef from the village cows and bulls that had been too old or frail to last the winter. 

As Lange stepped slowly forward, he scanned the villagers with his eye, but he saw no one he recognized – hardly surprising, given how few folks he knew from Cold Run. There was no sign of Cold Run's feud-loving priest, much to Lange's relief; instead, a younger priest sat nearby, surrounded by small children who were listening to a story he told them about the Jackal God's sly manner of tricking humans. Lange turned his head to and fro, but he could see no sign of Cold Run's baron. 

Another man caught Lange's eye. He was sitting at the edge of the green, talking to someone who was out of view, behind a building. He was perhaps ten years younger than Lange, his skin the same light brown as most borderlanders', but he was wearing a tunic so filled with gold thread that he must be a high nobleman or – more prosaically – a travelling jeweller. His hair held the same blend of dark and gold as Leda's hair, and he was snub-nosed. Clearly some relation of Leda's. 

That much Lange had time to think. In the next moment, the man – who had been laughing at something said by his conversational partner – broke off abruptly, turning his head. His amber eyes met Lange's. 

It was perhaps the man's sudden stillness that alerted the other villagers. Within seconds, every man in Cold Run was on his feet, his blade drawn. 

Lange had expected this – had known that he might not be offered the opportunity to speak a single word. He braced himself for the rush against him. 

But apparently the village men's stance was purely defensive; none of them came forward. And in the next moment, a sharp word was spoken, and all the men sheathed their blades. The amber-eyed man's hidden conversational partner stepped into view. 

Griffith seemed to have aged much more than the four years since Lange had last seen him. Responsibility weighed upon him, in every heavy step that he took. But he was still a young man – younger than Lange, and with the careful movements of a man trained to fight. He was wearing his sword, and his hand rested upon its hilt as he came forward. Lange drew in a slow breath. 

Griffith halted, well short of reaching Lange. In a voice clear enough to be heard by all his villagers, he said, "Mountside." 

Lange nodded, acknowledging his new name. "Cold Run." 

Griffith gestured with his chin, not moving his hand from his hilt. "We saw the funeral pyre yesterday. Berenger is dead?" 

There was no sound of sympathy in his voice, which was hardly surprising, but neither was there contempt; the Baron of Cold Run was keeping his voice very level. Lange did his best to match Griffith's calm as he said, "He is. I and my wife and son have left our village. We were the only ones remaining in Mountside." It seemed important to emphasize that, lest the hunting of blood spread to the places where the former villagers had gone to live. 

Griffith nodded, looking unsurprised. No doubt the traders had told him of Mountside's lingering death as a village. Still in that neutral voice, he said, "If my kinswoman and her boy are in need of refuge from the war, they are welcome in my village." 

Lange felt something hard and painful ease in his chest then. He nodded, and Griffith waved a hand. A woman ran forward from the crowd, past Lange, keeping a goodly distance from him, though Lange was holding his palms forward, in the stance adopted by young boys to show their friends that they are unarmed. A moment later, Lange caught a glimpse of Leda and Drew being drawn into the gathering of women and children. He didn't allow himself to look that way. Griffith was too close. 

The Baron of Cold Run waited. It took Lange far too long to speak the next words. Finally he managed to say, "You offered peace to Mountside." 

Griffith's mouth twisted in a grimace of a smile. "You expect me to offer up my life again, after four years?" 

Lange shook his head. "Mountside rejected your offer; it is Mountside's obligation now to sue for peace." He drew in a breath of the harsh winter air. "I make the same offer you did: my life in blood-payment for peace." 

There was a stir in the crowd then. The priest, who had stood when the other men did, leaned across to say something to the amber-eyed man. The man shook his head wordlessly; his gaze was fixed, not upon Lange, but upon Griffith. 

The Baron of Cold Run said nothing, not even a formal acceptance of the offer. He simply walked forward, his hand tight upon its hilt. There followed the sound of dozens of villagers sucking in their breaths. Drew burst into loud sobs. 

_"Mountside went mad; it died; it lies a corpse."_ The Jackal's soft voice echoed in Lange's head. _"I will eat it, if you wish."_

The Jackal's fire, eating the dead and purifying men of their evil. A flame that could transform into good the evil of the blood feud, the evil of Adrian's death, the evil of Lange's betrayal. 

But only if the sacrifice were willingly given. 

Griffith was within sword's reach now. Lange felt the sweat cold upon his body. He had been trained, as all Koretian boys were, to fight in duels, to hunt in blood feuds, and to remain courageous in the face of danger. But it was one thing to stand with a blade in your hand, ready to fight. It was quite another to stand unarmed as your executioner approached. 

Lange did not see what happened to Griffith's blade-hand. But in the next moment, both hands were upon Lange's shoulders, gripping him hard. Before Lange could surmise what this meant, the Baron of Cold Run spoke. 

"Welcome home, cousin," he said, and embraced Lange. 

o—o—o

The smell of sizzling meat had been replaced by the scent of spices as women handed out mulled wine made of Koretian wild-berries. Lange took his wine in hand and sat down on the log offered to him, somewhat apart from the other men. As he did so, his gaze drifted toward the young priest, who had resumed his storytelling to the youngest children. A small girl draped herself over his lap, mouth wide with awe as the priest spoke of the Moon, who took the dead from their initial escort, the Jackal, and gave them a home in the Land Beyond. Near the girl, Siward hovered, though at age twenty, he would have looked more at home with the young men nearby. 

Seeing Lange glance in that direction, Griffith said, "Peregrine has served as our representative to the gods for the past four years, since Felix departed." The flat tone of Griffith's voice left no doubt that the feud-loving priest had been expelled by the village's baron. "Emlyn found Peregrine for us; he knew Peregrine when he lived in the priests' house, among the other orphans." 

Lange's gaze drifted over to the fire, where two figures sat. One of them was Leda, tossing back the loose strands of her hair as she laughed. During all those years of hearing tales of the friendship of the three boys from Cold Run and the two boys from Mountside, it had somehow never occurred to Lange to ask himself what Leda had done during her brothers' trips to Cold Run. It turned out that she had kept company with the Cold Run girls. Many of her old playmates were still here, grown women now; they had welcomed Leda into their midst. 

But now she was sitting, not with the women, but with her amber-eyed cousin. Light shifted upon Emlyn's gold-and-brown hair as he leaned forward to better hear what Leda said. The animation in his face was like a foreshadow of what Adrian might have been, if he had grown older, or what Drew might be again, as he grew up in this peaceful village. 

"And Blackwood?" Lange turned his attention back to the baron. 

Griffith's expression darkened. He was seated on a log opposite Lange, apparently unconcerned to preserve the dignity of his rank. He had set aside the sword, though he kept it close at hand, in case the King should break the peace by sending his hunters here. 

"The Baron of Blackpass posed some difficulties," Griffith admitted. "We had a number of tense conversations before he conceded that Cold Run had already played its part in this war. He agreed that, if Mountside sent no more hunters to Cold Run, I need not send any more hunters to Mountside. Now that Mountside and Cold Run are at peace, it's unlikely that our peace will be broken. Our villages are too far away from other borderland villages to attract hunters." 

Lange looked down at his wine, which sparkled in the light of the bonfire. The bonfire was a haven of warmth on this cold night; everyone in Mountside was staying close to it. 

"Mountside is dead," he said finally, raising his head. "The village is gone, and as for the title . . . I ceded that to you in the moment I offered you our surrender. Even if you had let me live and sent me away, there would have been no one left for me to rule over, with Leda and Drew in your care." A possibility that had frightened him as much as the likelihood of death. To have been separated from his wife and child would have been a lingering death. 

The compassion in Griffith's eyes was clear, but he merely agreed, "Mountside is dead, and we can hope that your sacrifice of it will help save what is left of the village's lineage." He waved his hand in the direction of Drew, who was enthusiastically talking with the older children of Cold Run. "I cannot give you back the name of your village, even if the laws of this land permitted you to retain your name of Mountside while you lived in Cold Run; as you say, there is no village left for you to rule over. But as for your title . . ." 

He paused. Lange could hear the excited voices of the older children as they worked together on the village's creation basket. Leda left Emlyn in order that she might rejoin the women, while Emlyn wandered over to watch the progress of the creation. Siward continued to hover near the younger children. 

For the first time, Griffith's voice became hesitant. "Tonight you offered me so great a sacrifice that I feel petty to ask more of you. I realize how difficult this must be for you, to allow another village baron to rule over you. The only thing worse would be for you to remain a baron, yet not hold a baron's full power." 

Lange waited. The women, Leda among them, were beginning to gather together the remains of the feast, storing the food away for the long winter. The men rose and started to move the logs they had been sitting upon back to their usual position in the village storehouse. The priest ushered the younger children over to their mothers, while Siward tagged along, though his mother had died some years ago. Only the older children remained absorbed in their important task. 

Griffith's voice had gone low. "Siward has been very badly affected by the events of the past four years. He blames himself for the start of the blood feud, for the death of the man he killed as a hunter, and for Adrian's execution, because Adrian was condemned for not fulfilling his blood vow to kill Siward. And even before all this happened . . . When I was younger, I heard my father tell my mother one day that it was the gods' good fortune I was the heir to the barony, rather than Siward." 

"And now Siward is your heir," Lange said, grasping understanding. 

Griffith nodded. Continuing to keep his voice low, so that he would not be overheard, he said, "It seems unlikely that I will marry and beget a son any time soon; I often travel these days, doing my own small part in trying to bring peace to our kingdom. But it has become clear that Siward is not yet ready to take on the duties of a baron, even for a short while. And so . . ." Griffith's voice trailed off. 

Lange made no quick reply. Griffith was right that he was asking a painful task of Lange: to act as occasional regent to a baron, when Lange might have been baron of his own village. 

Yet at the same time, Lange felt relief that he had more to offer his new village than a few rusty carpentry skills. "Baron," he said, leaning forward, "I would be most glad to care for your village whenever you are away, and to help train your brother to eventually take on his duties, in my place." 

Griffith blew out his breath, clearly relieved that no offense had been taken. "May the gods bless you for your generosity," he said. "You come as an answer to my prayers. I was pleading to the Jackal only last night to send me some sort of help for this trouble." 

Lange had been in the midst of setting his cup of wine aside; now he paused. Light glimmered in the dregs of the wine, like moonlight upon snow. Somewhere up on the mountain, the Jackal turned his head south, as though listening to something heard from far away. . . . 

"At what time did you make this prayer?" asked Lange, his throat tight. 

Griffith looked understandably startled at this question. "I'm not sure. It was late at night; I had difficulty sleeping— Ah, I remember. I had just finished my prayers to the Moon. I prayed to the Jackal at moonset." He rose to his feet. "I think the children are ready for us. Let us go see what they have prepared for us this year." 

Lange followed him, but slowly, his heart filled with the mystery of it all. Images were beginning to flash through his mind: A gentle boy who loved peace, urging Lange northward. A young woman, gentle like her younger cousin, capturing Lange's heart. The hardening of that heart as Lange allowed himself to follow the twisted path of the Baron of Mountside. The growing bewilderment of his wife and son as they witnessed Lange turn into a killer. And then, quite suddenly, a stranger in a god's mask, turning Lange's path toward a village of peace, where Lange met the same gentle young man who had sent Lange northward long ago. 

There were pieces missing from the picture. Why had Emlyn urged Lange so fervently to visit a borderland village? Why had Adrian returned to Mountside, seeking the Jackal? Who was the light-skinned man who had taken Adrian's body away from his murderers? Why had the Baron of Cold Run forgiven Lange for the murder of his father? Above all, how had the Jackal, amongst his many responsibilities, known to come in Lange's hour of greatest need? 

Many pieces were missing, but enough pieces were there for Lange to finally see what he had been blind to until now. 

A pattern, amidst all the mischances of life. A path toward peace that no one had known he was journeying upon, except perhaps the gods. 

The children swarmed their baron as he arrived. Lange wriggled his way through the crowd, seeking his son. He felt a strong tenderness as he finally sighted Drew. He had felt it ever since the moment when Drew burst into tears. Lange had realized then that he needed Drew's tears. He needed to know that his death was mourned by his family. He needed to know that, unlike Titus's wife, his family would not forget him. 

Now Drew hung back, eyeing his father; his expression was filled with guilt and shame. Lange was startled; then he realized that Drew must be expecting a reprimand for having disobeyed his father. Lange stood still a minute, watching bleakness travel over Drew, smothering his earlier excitement. 

_"I want us to be safe and free,"_ Drew had said the previous night. Lange had not paid attention to that final word. Yet now he wondered: How much of Drew's unhappiness during the past few years had come from Lange's quick, hard reprimands whenever Drew showed excitement or curiosity or grief? Lange had been driven by fear that, with his wild feelings and actions, Drew would eventually be drawn into the kingdom's war. Yet even Leda had learned the lesson that Lange had fearfully taught: do not show openly what your heart feels, even if what your heart feels is love. 

He took three strides forward, and then his arms were around his son, hugging him tightly. Drew gave a startled squeak; then he hugged his father hard, as though he had been awaiting this moment for four years. 

Lange felt a familiar presence at his shoulder; releasing Drew, he turned and kissed Leda passionately. This elicited much cheering from the children and kindly laughter from their elders, who had begun to drift over to look at the creation basket. 

"Come show us what you've made," Lange said to Drew when he finally managed to disentangle himself from Leda. She had kissed him back with as much force as though he had been rescued from death only moments before. 

Eager now, Drew took Lange's hand and pulled him over to where the other children were waiting. 

The creation basket had been made, not in an actual basket, but atop a number of trestle tables shoved together. It was not quite as big as Cold Run; Adrian's memory had been colored by how young he had been when he last saw Cold Run's creation. Yet the creation was certainly the largest map of Koretia that Lange had ever seen. It was also the strangest, for in place of marks on paper were actual hills and trees and villages and towns and a capital, all made out of greenery and other objects from the nearby woods. 

Shyly at first, and then with growing keenness, the children showed off the places they had made. Lange was careful to praise each part of the map; Drew's eyes shone more and more as Lange demonstrated his interest in what the children had made. 

The other men and women were likewise praising the children. Some of them, Lange had come to realize, were not native to Cold Run. They had come, family by family, in search of a village that would give them refuge in time of war. 

"The Jackal sent us here," more than one of the newcomers had told Lange. "The trickster god came to us at night and told us to come here." 

Staring at the greenery representing the gods' creation, Lange realized for the first time that the Jackal, in seeming to offer him two choices of refuge, had actually offered him two choices of the same refuge. Lange could have begged refuge from Griffith, and Griffith would have grudgingly given it, determined as the baron was to give refuge to anyone who refused to take part in the war. 

But Lange had instead sought a dangerous peace, and that would make all the difference to the role he played in this village, and in the trust that Griffith now held for him. 

"You come from near our capital originally, don't you?" said one of the villagers to Lange. "Do you have kin there?" 

He nodded. He had already asked and received permission from Griffith to request passing traders to be on the lookout for Malcolm and Mira. Should good fortune continue to shine in his path, Lange would be able to contact them and let them know that they could find safe refuge in this village. Now, staring at the children's representation of a countryside that he knew was being torn apart by war, it occurred to Lange that he might ask Griffith if his peacemaking work extended to the south. 

Lange could do nothing for his brothers; they had willingly chosen to take part in the civil war. But Lange could travel to the south on Griffith's behalf, meet with his parents, show them a drawing of Drew, and urge them to come see their grandson. Once here in Cold Run, his parents could choose for themselves whether they desired such peace. 

It would be a dangerous journey for him, but he was used to that by now. 

"Show us Cold Run!" cried the brown-and-gold-haired girl who had hung over the priest's lap. 

The other children turned to look at Drew. Evidently, the newest boy had been permitted the privilege of creating their village. 

Drew pointed. All that Lange saw at first was a mountain. The mountain was empty, except for a few pebbles atop it. One of the pebbles had been laboriously inscribed with a single letter: A. 

Lange touched the pretend tombstones lightly with his finger. Drew was right. Mountside was dead, but its dead needed to be tended and remembered. When next he visited the cemetery to tend its dead, Lange would create a tombstone to memorialize Adrian, whose death had helped to bring about a little bit of the peace that Lange's brother-in-marriage had so desired. 

Near the mountain, wild-berries representing a stream led down to tiny sprigs of pine, set into moss. At the end of the woods lay Cold Run, but here Drew's energy had evidently given out, for no houses stood in that place. Instead, Drew – imaginative Drew – had done what no other child had thought to do: he had placed people in the creation. 

They were stick figures, without heads, but it was easy enough to figure out who they were, for one of the stick figures was unarmed, while the other wore a stick-sword and had his arms outstretched to greet the first stick figure. 

"Oh!" cried Drew as Lange's throat closed in. "I almost forgot!" 

He turned to the side as Leda leaned against Lange. Sliding his arm around her waist, Lange watched Drew look over his shoulder. As though he had been awaiting this moment, Emlyn reached out and handed something to Drew. As Emlyn smiled, Lange recognized the little blackroot sculpture in Drew's hand: it was a jackal. 

Drew carefully placed the jackal between the two stick figures, slightly to one side; then he looked up anxiously at Lange. "That's right, isn't it, Father?" he asked, the need for approval clear in his voice. "I thought a god should be there, to witness the peace." 

"That's right, son," agreed Lange, smiling as he felt the warmth of Leda's presence next to him, and the warmth of Cold Run's fellowship around him. "The god's peace brought us here."

**Author's Note:**

> December 2017 edition. [Publication history](http://duskpeterson.com/cvhep.htm#seasonofdangerouspeace).
> 
> This story was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com). The story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Copyright © 2017 Dusk Peterson. Permission is granted for fan fiction and fan art inspired by this story. Please credit Dusk Peterson and duskpeterson.com for the original story.


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